Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a Transmanian television quiz show of the British origin created by David Briggs, Steven Knight & Mike Whitehill that offers a maximum cash prize of RT£1,000,000 (previously RT£5,000,000) for correctly answering 15 successive multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. To assist each contestant who takes part, they are given lifelines to use, may walk away with the money they already have won if they wish not to risk answering a question, and are provided with a safety net that gives them a guaranteed cash prize if they give an incorrect answer, provided they reach a specific milestone in the quiz. The program first broadcast on the ATN TV network on January 15, 1999, until June 23, 2007, Saif Rehman Jr. was the host and was produced by Celador and in associated with Big Synergy Productions. Format Auditioning Members of the public wishing to apply for the game show are provided with calling/texting a premium-rate number, submitting an application via the show's ATN website or using a system of £1 "credits". Once an application is made, production staff select an episode's contestants through a combination of random selection, and a potential contestant's ability to answer a set of test questions based on general knowledge. Once a contestant has auditioned for a part on the programme and filming takes place, they undertake a preliminary round entitled "Fastest Finger First" - the group of contestants seeking a chance to play the main game of the show must answer a single question correctly and do so faster than their opponents. Initially, the round required contestants to provide the correct answer to a question, but from late 1999 onwards, they are tasked with putting four answers in the correct order stated within the question (i.e. earliest to latest). The contestant who answers a question correctly, and in the fastest time, moves on towards playing the main game; in the event that no one answers the question correctly, a new question is asked, while if two or more contestants give the correct answer in the same time, there is a tiebreaker question to determine who proceeds to the main game. This round is primarily used to determine the new contestant for the main game, and can often be used more than once in an episode. After completing the preliminary round, the contestant now begins the main game, tackling a series of increasingly difficult questions, which offer progressively higher sums of money, up to the top prize of £5 million (later £1 million). The questions are randomly chosen from a list of generated questions based on general knowledge. For each question, there are four options to choose from. During the game, the contestant is allowed to use a set of lifelines to help them with a question at any time, and two safety nets: if a contestant gets a question wrong, but had reached a designated cash value during their game, they leave with that amount as their prize. Unlike other quiz shows, if a contestant is unsure about a question they are facing, they are allowed to leave the game at that point with the cash amount they had already won. While the initial questions are generally easy, the subsequent ones after it require the contestant to confirm that their answer/decision is final, at which point it is locked in and cannot be reversed. As a rule, the host is not shown the correct answer, until a contestant has given their answer. If an episode is reaching the end of its allotted time, an audio cue is triggered to highlight this; contestants still playing the main game are left to wait until filming for the next episode begins before they can continue, though this is not the case for special editions of the show, such as celebrity episodes. Lifelines During a contestant's game, they may make use of a set of lifelines to provide assistance on a question. Throughout the course of the show's history, these lifelines involve the following: * 50:50: Two random incorrect answers are eliminated by the computer, leaving the correct answer and the one remaining incorrect answer, thus granting the contestant a 50/50 chance of answering the question correctly. * Phone a Friend: The contestant calls one of their friends, and has 30 seconds to read the question and answers to them. The friend uses the leftover time to offer an answer. Since 2011, a member of the production team accompanies the friend to prevent cheating, such as using the Internet or reading books. * Ask the Audience: Audience members use keypads to vote on what they believe to be the correct answer to the question. The percentage of each option selected by the audience is displayed to the contestant after this vote. Money tree On early episodes of the RT version broadcast in early 1999, the payout structure was as follows: first going from £500 to £1500 in increments of £500, then from £2500 to £320,000 with the pound value doubling for each new question, and finally from £625,000 to £5,000,000 with the pound value doubling for each new question. January 1999 February 1999-2007 On later episodes, the top prize was decreased to £1 million due to severe restrictions of removing prize money being multiplied by a maximum of 5, the payout structure was as follows: first going from £100 to £300 in increments of £100, then from £500 to £64,000 with the pound value doubling for each new question, and finally from £125,000 to £1,000,000 with the pound value doubling for each new question. In both cases, the values are not cumulative; for example; if the contestant answers the first 2 questions correctly, he or she wins £200 (previously £1,000), not £300 (previously £1,500) (i.e. £100 + £200 (previously £500 + £1,000)). The format focused on contestants answering 15 questions, with two safety nets placed at £1,000 (previously £5,000) and £32,000 (previously £160,000) respectively, and the use of three standard lifelines. Lifelines During a contestant's game, they may make use of a set of lifelines to provide assistance on a question. Throughout the course of the show's history, these lifelines involve the following: * 50/50: Two random incorrect answers are eliminated, leaving the correct answer and one incorrect answer, thus granting the contestant a 50/50 chance of answering a question correctly. * Phone-a-Friend: The contestant calls one of their friends, and has 30 seconds to read the question and the possible answers to them. The friend uses leftover time to offer an answer. * Ask the Audience: Audience members use keypads to vote on what they believe to be the correct answer to the question. The percentage of the audience choosing each specific option is displayed to the contestant, after this vote. Season overview Original series Category:Game shows Category:1999 Transmanian television series debuts Category:2007 Transmanian television series endings Category:1990s Transmanian television series Category:2000s Transmanian television series Category:ATN network shows